What Happened to Equality Under the Law?

In American Greatness Victor Davis writes one of his best pieces ever, and that is saying something!

A James Clapper can lie to Congress under oath about intelligence surveillance of U.S. citizens; a John Brennan can lie about CIA monitoring of U.S. Senate computers, or mislead Congress about the absence of any collateral damage in the use of drones. Yet we are supposed to give both further credence based on their emeriti titles or to believe their current Captain Renault-like outrage over President Trump’s lack of presidential decorum? But what in their past has earned them the moral high ground? Claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was largely “secular,” or redefining jihad as “a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam”?

Are we supposed to believe that Robert Mueller did not overreach by spinning off an investigation of Trump consigliere and lawyer Michael Cohen?

Why? Because we are also told that a regional federal prosecutor would have to have had good cause to order raids on Cohen? Because a federal judge would have had to have seen such credible evidence before anyone dared enter Cohen’s office and residence? Because another federal justice believes it is in the national interest that we know Michael Cohen knows Sean Hannity?

Trust in the Obama-era directorships of the Justice Department, FBI, and, indeed, the federal courts themselves are now horses that have long ago left the proverbial judicial barn. Should the public also believe that no sober and judicious FISA court judge would ever have approved surveillance of American citizens without asking where the evidence came from, who compiled it, who, if any, paid for it, or had a vested interest in seeing it used for a warrant? Should the public believe that its FBI director, and various deputy attorney generals, would never have dared keep from a FISA court information about their own submitted evidence?

...If the FBI director, the national steward of investigatory ethics, leaks classified government documents with impunity, then who in the United States could be ever prosecuted again for such a crime?

Comey has misled a federal FISA court. Several of his testimonies to Congress about the timelines of his Clinton report, or his care not to leak FBI investigations are probably false. More falsehoods will appear when his memoir is collated with his voluminous testimonies. Either Comey, McCabe, or Loretta Lynch is lying, or in fact, all three are doing so. Comey previously testified that the Steele dossier had no credibility; on his book tour, he now winks and nods that it does.

...We know the Russians dumped dirt to Christopher Steele, and we know too that Comey himself knew that fact, and he knew it well enough not to tell a federal judge. The public would have good cause to see Comey currently indicted and facing federal felonies rather than exempt from charges and cashing in on his miscreant behavior.

What Happened to Equality Under the Law?
For the next decade, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the federal judiciary will have to explain exactly why some Americans can lie to federal investigators, lie to the Congress, destroy subpoenaed evidence, leak classified documents, and face no consequences—while other Americans would have had—and have had—their lives and careers ruined for much less.

...In addition, what the FBI hierarchy did not do seems almost as worrisome as what it did. All of what James Comey is and did follows a disturbing FBI administrative culture of intelligence and preemptive investigatory failures—the Boston Marathon bombing, Fort Hood shooting, and the Orlando and San Bernardino massacres in which knowledge of suspects and their suspect activity should have led the FBI to preemptive action. While an Andrew McCabe was finessing his own conflicts of interest, while the lovesick Page and Strzok were conniving to warp an election, and while Comey was orchestrating his special counsel appointment gambit, how much other important FBI business was simply ignored?

...Self-righteousness and self-referencing become fatal when combined with incompetence and malfeasance. James Comey is our touchstone to a morally confused age.

Read more here.

Intolerance toward any differing perspective

Natasha Maria Phoenix writes at Trigger Warning,

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

Once upon a time classical liberalism was known for advocating free speech, free thinking, open discourse, and challenging dogmas. In the modern use, liberals are associated with the sexual revolution and freedom of alternative lifestyle. These days, liberalism has become something altogether different. It has become the very thing it once hated, and it is not even aware of this change.

Secular dogmas have been created, proper conduct has been decided, the socially just are the righteous, and any who deviate are committing a secular sin. Some have called it “political correctness.” I find this phrase overused and meaningless. What we are witnessing is a passive totalitarian control of the public discourse.

The Internet has allowed the creation of echo chambers, or better put, hugboxes. Like-minded individuals come together and wallow in emotional pity, confirm one another’s perspective, and rant against an unjust world. The most destructive result of this is the intolerance towards any differing perspective. Mainstream news, academia, and college campuses have adopted this ‘hugbox’ mode. Essentially the discourse is narrowed, the correct positions are praised and confirmed, any deviating views are condemned.

Rea more here.